Russia's Donetsk push stalls as Ukraine disputes Kostiantynivka claim and hits targets deep inside Russia

Russia's summer offensive in eastern Ukraine has slowed markedly, with heavy fighting concentrated in the Donetsk region but few confirmed territorial gains, according to Ukrainian and independent military assessments.

The sharpest dispute is over Kostiantynivka. Russia's defence ministry claimed in early July that its forces had captured the city, but Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the claim as "simply yet another Russian lie" designed to generate headlines. The Institute for the Study of War and Ukraine's General Staff assess that Russian infiltration groups hold positions in roughly a third of the city without consolidated control, amid up to 20 assaults a day.

The wider picture, analysts say, is of a grinding stalemate. Russian assault pressure remains focused around Kostiantynivka and the approaches to Pokrovsk, but the Institute for the Study of War judges that Moscow lacks the numerical density to sustain simultaneous offensives on both, and is extremely unlikely to seize all of Donetsk Oblast by the end of 2026.

The human cost, by Ukrainian accounting, has been severe. Ukraine's General Staff put Russian casualties in June 2026 at around 39,490 — figures Moscow does not confirm and which cannot be independently verified — and said total Russian personnel losses since the February 2022 invasion had passed 1.34 million. Russian forces currently hold roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has leaned heavily on long-range strikes. On July 20, Zelensky confirmed Ukrainian attacks on a Russian oil depot, logistics facilities in the Moscow region and six Black Sea vessels, while Ukrainian drones struck a Russian security-service coordination centre in occupied Kherson. Kyiv says it has nearly doubled its successful strikes behind Russian lines, using first-person-view and bomber drones to find and hit targets.

That shift reflects a war increasingly defined by cheap, mass-produced drones on both sides, which now dominate the skies over the front and reach ever deeper into rear areas.

Diplomacy remains stuck. The Kremlin has continued to reassert maximalist demands, according to Western analysts — rejecting territorial concessions, refusing to return occupied land, and resisting both security guarantees for Ukraine and European participation in any negotiations. With neither side willing to move, there is little prospect of a breakthrough in the near term.

For Ukrainians living near the front, the result is another summer of attrition: a slower Russian advance, but no end in sight, and a war that has settled into a brutal contest of endurance.